LEADERSLEEP

Mod Note (Andy): This post is a reprint from the January 25th edition of Jared's Daily Dirtnap Newsletter. If you'd like to read more, WSO readers qualify for a $100 discount to his Daily Dirtnap daily market newsletter...just email [email protected] and mention "WSO Monkey Discount". You can follow Jared on twitter at @dailydirtnap..

I had to take a bunch of leadership classes at the Coast Guard Academy. It was unimaginably awful.

It’s not a bad thing to learn leadership, that is, a) if you think leadership can even be taught and b) if you think it even matters in the first place. Good leaders come in all shapes and sizes, not all of them George Patton archetypes. Good leadership is impossible to define. But the search for it is like the search for the fountain of youth.

At school there was this Captain that everyone thought was a good leader. He used to call these impromptu assemblies and pontificate wildly, without notes, for about 45 minutes on high-sounding stuff that we really didn’t understand. He had the commandingest of commanding voices. In oratory skills, he put Obama himself to shame.

Later, as an Admiral, he took the fall for one of the greatest Coast Guard failures ever, the acquisition project Deepwater. Giving speeches apparently has no bearing on complex negotiations with contractors.

Leadership, I suppose, you could define as the ability to get people to do what you want them to do. Which is pretty easy. You say, “do what I say, or watch your tail.” You impose consequences if things go wrong. People fear consequences, so they do what you want. But that sort of thing is frowned upon.

People want inspirational leadership instead, where you are inspired to do XYZ. Notice that all these different kinds of leadership are used in an environment where there isn’t already a pretty powerful motivator: money. The beautiful thing about Wall Street. What inspires people is a big direct deposit at the end of the year.

That sounds pretty vulgar, but who cares? The firm where I worked, Lehman Brothers, things ran pretty smoothly on a day-to-day basis because people were properly motivated. There was a direct connection between their output and their rewards, which is literally the best thing in the world. When that connection starts getting tenuous, people need to be motivated in other ways, which is much more messy.

Editorial: this is kind of where we are today.

Let me give you my leadership philosophy, the essence of it, which has worked just fine for me:

Hold people to impossibly high standards. Most people will rise to meet them. The ones who don’t, you don’t care about.

The general premise here is that people consistently underestimate their abilities. They go through life unchallenged. You challenge people, you push through their limits, there is pain, but there is growth.

Not everyone is going to get it. But that is okay.

This applies everywhere, holding people to higher standards. It applies at the corporate level, it applies in education, and it especially applies to people who are running for President. When was the last time we had a President who expected more of people? That everyone needs to help row the boat? People complain about the mood in this country. It starts at the top.